Page 55

Chapter 54

I Never Really Wanted Your Soul

SJ

I f she was willing to let me continue to apologise in this way … well, who was I to deny her?

I carried her into her bedroom, acknowledging to myself that once I’d sexually exhausted her, there would come a time when we would need to have a proper conversation about my wrongdoings … and the fact that I had no true idea of what my future would look like. My entire life had just been turned upside down, all because she asked me to save her dad.

And I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat. For her.

But first, I desperately needed to show her how much she meant to me. To worship the perfect temple of her body and set aside the harshness of reality. To bask in her pleasure.

“You know,” she began as I laid her down on her comforter and climbed onto the bed beside her, “No more apology sex required … You’re already forgiven, SJ.” She grinned slyly at me. “Although … I might be amenable to an extra apology in the morning … just to be safe, you know?”

She might have been smirking at me, but her voice was rough with unshed tears. I leaned back to search those sky-bright eyes of hers.

“Jemma, you don’t have to pretend that what I did—everything I did to you—was okay. I …” I rested my forehead against her shoulder. I wanted nothing more than to kiss my way down her body and feast, but now that we’d started this, it would be wrong not to have the hard conversation. And just hope that she still wanted the feasting after.

“I need to apologise for … so much,” I mumbled against the soft rise of her breast.

Soft, small hands combed through my hair. “You really don’t. I know that you only … broke up with me … because you were trying to keep me safe from your sister.”

“And she got to you regardless.” I scrunched up my face. But devils do cry, especially when they’ve hurt the one they love above all others. I let those tears fall. “I hurt you, and I knew I was hurting you, and I kept doing it. And in the end, it was all for nothing.”

“Not for nothing!” She gripped my chin, lifting my face until I had to look at her. “Was it a kind of stupid idea?” She shrugged. “Yeah. But you did it with good intentions. You did it to help me. To protect me.”

Her thumb swiped at my wet cheeks. “I didn’t believe you that day … not really. I let you do it because I had a feeling there was something else going on, and you were running from me because of it. It didn’t take me long to suspect that you’d done it out of some odd, masculine urge to keep me safe … because I know you, SJ.”

She scooted down the bed until she was eye to eye with me, wrapping her arms and legs around me. “I’ve had plenty of chances to learn all about you—the real you, that is. And you’re a good man, Satan Junior Lucifer.” Her mouth met mine in a soft, comforting press.

“I don’t want to be a good man,” I mumbled against those soft, strawberry lips. “I just want to be your man.”

She giggled wetly, breaking the kiss. “You can be both, you know. In fact, I like knowing the one good devil out there is all mine. Makes me feel special.”

“You already were special, all on your own, Mouse,” I murmured, tucking her cerise hair behind her ear and rolling us until she was under me. “From the very first moment I spied you talking to yourself in that ridiculous puffy jacket outside the hospital, I knew. It was why I followed you to those markets. Even then, I think deep down I knew I never really wanted your soul. I just wanted you.”

She beamed up at me, her eyes sparkling with unshed tears. “And … I know what you did, with Professor Proctor. And I want you to know … I’m going to do it. Finish my degree.”

“And will you get the other qualifications you need to become an art … terrorist?” I winced as Jemma shook with barely contained mirth.

“That’s not the right word, is it?” I asked sheepishly.

She shook her head, laughter bubbling from her perfect lips. “I think that’s what Chad is … an art terrorist,” she chortled, her breasts bouncing against my chest, distracting me from my humiliation. “I, on the other hand, plan to become an art therapist . A really bloody good one.”

Her fingers slid down between our bodies until she was gripping me, stroking me. My embarrassment vanished, and I groaned against the side of her face. “And I wouldn’t have that chance if it weren’t for you, SJ,” she crooned.

“I … I hardly think one little letter makes up for almost poisoning you with gluten, and bringing you to tears, letting you think your girls were going to catch some mystical Hell virus— ungh .”

“Well, like you said,” she murmured coyly, pumping me faster, her back arching until her breasts were right there, begging to be licked and nibbled on. “You’ve got the rest of your life to make up with me.”

“I …” I blinked, trying to stave off the rising heat in my bollocks. “I also … might have this … other thing I committed to, just earlier,” I grated. Since we were already having the serious chat, I needed to get my last confession off my chest.

“Oh?” she cooed, thumbing the damp head of my cock and making me shudder. “What’s that?”

I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek. I was not going to groan these words through my climax. I simply wasn’t. “I might have … liberated Heaven from the tyranny of God, and … sort of … given Hell to my sister on the promise that I am now in charge of where all eternal souls go when they die …”

Her hand stilled. Her eyes widened.

“Those were some very confusing words,” she mumbled. I propped myself up on my elbows, watching her warily.

“I … I found out who my mother is, yesterday,” I confessed. “And, as it turns out … God is my mother.”

Jemma gasped raggedly. “What?”

“Yes … well … she and Father had apparently conspired to conceive me because neither of them could trust the other to send souls where they deserved to go. So apparently, that’s my job now. And …” I glanced away. “I don’t know how much of my time it will take up. So much is in the air right now. I don’t even know if Heaven has sorted themselves out without their deity, or if they expect me to live up there … which would be stupid, really, given I need to send souls to both … and it’s too early to know if the demons will accept Hellen as their queen, even after she gives them Father and … and God, to play with.”

“You … you sacrificed your parents to the demons of Hell?” Jemma’s words were barely a breath.

I nodded. “When you say it like that, it sounds awful … but they—both of them—were vile creatures. Selfish, and conniving, and greedy … and Hellen is violent and devious, but she really does want the best for Hell, and if we pull it off, you’re safe from her forever, I made very sure of that … so it seemed like the best solution.”

“You did all of this … for me ?”

I could barely think. She wasn’t stroking, but her grip on me was … distracting, to say the least. “Yes, for you. But also because … I never want a good soul like your father’s to end up being tortured thanks to the greed of those in charge of eternity. And … the thought that your parents’ murderers might end up in Heaven because of a loophole … that’s simply unconscionable.”

“Where … where is Dad?” Jemma asked faintly. “I forgot, until now. I was too worried about you.”

Something in my chest warmed and expanded at the words, at the knowledge that I was someone’s first priority. I was her first priority.

“Pete … that’s the fellow in Heaven who sends the souls to the right place up there … he had him reunited with your mother. She’s been up there the whole time.”

Jemma’s eyes swam with tears, her lips wobbling. “You … she was?”

I nodded. “We can go and visit them, if you like. Once your dad has settled in a bit, I guess. He’s going to need time to recover from?—”

She silenced me with her hungry, desperate mouth, her teeth clacking with mine in her rush to get as close as she could.

I wasn’t complaining. I wrapped her in my arms and rolled us once more until she was atop me, enveloped in my arms.

“You … are the … love of my life,” she whispered fervently against my mouth. “The best man who ever lived. Tomorrow we can work all of this out, but right now … I need you again, SJ.”

A tempest of emotions converged in my chest, soothed and stoked by her loving kiss. And her fingers, reaching between us once more, lining me up with her entrance. And that tight, wet pussy, sinking onto me.

“Mouse,” I groaned, her snug heat gloving me, stealing any sense from my brain. “You don’t have to?—”

“Ask me,” she growled, nipping at my bottom lip. “Ask me to ride you until we both fall together.”

I couldn’t deny her. I didn’t want to deny her. “Please, Jemma,” I begged. “Please take your pleasure from me. Your pleasure is all I could ever want.”

“It will always be yours,” she promised, rocking herself on me, fondling her gorgeous tits as her cheeks and chest flushed with her arousal. “ I will always be yours.”

I bit back a curse, wondering if counting by sevens really would work to stave off my impending orgasm. I found her swollen clit and pulsed my thumb against it, savouring the little squeak she made.

“And I will forever belong to you,” I vowed. “No matter what the future and the Soul Realms need from me, first and foremost, I am yours, Mouse.”

I stroked her clit, stoking her pleasure as I sat up, finding one nipple and taking it between my teeth. She sucked in a breath, her pussy quivering as she slid up and down on me.

“So responsive here,” I rasped against the pointy peak, flicking it with my tongue. I fired off a silent thank you that her body was so primed for me as I gripped her backside with one hand and guided her into a rhythm. Thrust, stroke, flick. Thrust, stroke, flick, pleasuring her with cock, and fingers, and tongue, until she was nothing but a writhing, gasping mess atop me, her movements erratic as she cried out, her clit throbbing under my thumb, her pussy gripping me so tight with the pulses of her climax that I had no choice but to follow her right over that precipice.

She collapsed against me, that second, intense orgasm dragged from her by my mystical semen, and I clasped her to my chest, stroking her sweat-soaked hair. Finally, finally, with her safe in my arms, that tightness in my chest, the feeling I’d had too often since I’d met her, eased, and all I felt was the steady thump of my … my heart, beating in time with hers as she slowly came back to earth.

“Whatever happens next, SJ, just promise me … we’re in this together now, okay?” she mumbled in a rough, well-pleasured voice, her fingers trailing tiny patterns against my ribs.

“Together, Mouse. From now on.”